


the fire in your heart does not burn for me.

by windlewings



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Boys In Love, Canon Universe, Childhood Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru Angst, Love, M/M, One Shot, POV Iwaizumi Hajime, Short One Shot, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:00:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28941855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windlewings/pseuds/windlewings
Summary: I loved him in the way a scientist loves the subject he devotes a lifetime to studying, and I loved him in the way an artist pours himself into his work until it contains a piece of his soul he’ll never get back. Oikawa Tooru was not a god, but he was raised to the standards of one; the marks upon his forearms and the scuffs on his knees were proof enough that this boy, built like a modern diety, was no Achilles./ / Short Iwaoi oneshot where Oikawa picks volleyball over Iwaizumi and Iwa must come to terms with this.
Relationships: Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	the fire in your heart does not burn for me.

**Author's Note:**

> hey, thanks for taking the time to read this short story I wrote! I'm not the best at writing or grammar, but I hope that you'll enjoy it nevertheless. :)

They always said that he had heaven in his eyes and that I had hell in mine. They also said that someone like me shouldn't fall for someone like him, but I never listened- in fact, they couldn't have been more wrong. 

I always noticed that he moved with a sense of grace and purpose as he sashayed around the court with a calm and collected feel radiating from him, yet his soulful brown eyes held the contrary. They always swam with sadness, ambition, regret; so many emotions that I couldn't pinpoint. He always felt so much more than any other person I knew and I felt myself drowning in his vehemence every time our eyes met. I was so curious about what it would be like to understand this alluring setter on an emotional level, but despite his innate beauty peril always seemed to follow in the wake of his footsteps. Those who thought they knew him were afraid, but I knew him better than anyone and I was intrigued.

We first met when I had just turned seven and he was a month away from reaching the same milestone. Stuck like glue ever since, Tooru had been by my side and we both knew nothing could shake that bond. He and I complemented each other like spice on a birthday cake and our personalities clashed similarly, but that’s what drew me to him in the first place. His ambition was the first definitive quality I noticed. It burned inside of him like a freshly-spoked pyre and threatened to burn his insides out. Anyone else who dared get close would be singed on impact, but his fire simply melted my heart in the way only a hot chocolate could. 

He was an interesting specimen of a person, to say the least. I loved him in the way a scientist loves the subject he devotes a lifetime to studying, and I loved him in the way an artist pours himself into his work until it contains a piece of his soul he’ll never get back. When Tooru first introduced me to what he loves, volleyball, I was initially reluctant to indulge in his hobby. I couldn't resist, though, once I saw the passion with which he explained the game to me. His eyes flooded with the same love I imagined mine did when I watched him practice in the grassy meadow near our neighborhood and I wished that he would look at me the same. I thought that maybe if I sold my soul to the game in the same way he did, then there could be a slight chance he would regard me with the same burning desire. 

Almost immediately I noticed that he wasn’t as naturally inclined to the sport as I was. However, with a dangerous amount of practice and a fire of ambition strong enough to burn a whole forest, he rose up so quickly in skill that he eclipsed everything I had been and anything I would ever be. He was a king in his own right and the court was his holy domain until he became convinced Tobio planned a coup d'etat to steal the crown for himself. I always thought he was capable of controlling the blaze that burned behind those telling brown eyes, but instead of seeing the tranquility of a campfire, I saw a raging inferno as he threatened to fight the opposing setter three years his junior with only me standing as a barricade between these two antagonists. 

The tables turned that day and Tooru’s fire deteriorated from a gentle yellow to an out of control orange. He became better at hiding it, but I was the only one close enough to this burning tribute of ambition to see how lawlessly his tribulations ate away at him. Oikawa Tooru was not a god, but everyone held him to the standards of one. Offerings were placed at his altar for every service ace he landed and prayers of success were whispered to him for certain victory for the Aoba Johsai team. He was, rightfully, a star that outburned all of us and someone would have to be blind to ignore that blatant fact. The praise given to him for every win stoked his fire, tempting it to grow larger until it threatened to spill over the confines of his soul, and sometimes it did. 

I finally realized he had become a monster as he lay on my chest one-night sobbing molten tears of anguish into my bare skin while I kissed the bruises lining his forearms. They were various hues of blue, purple, and red and I would have compared them to the colors dotting the palette of an artist painting a glorious sunset, but I knew that these colors were born from the same pain invoked on sinners by the fires of hell. I begged Tooru to take a break from volleyball, to stop overworking himself before the damage from the endless hours of daily training caused irreversible damage. The marks upon his forearms and the scuffs on his knees were proof enough that this boy, built like a modern god, was no Achilles and I pleaded with him until he raised his face merely a couple of centimeters from mine and gazed into my soul as no other could. But the lover I always held close to my heart was nowhere to be seen in those tear-rimmed eyes. Instead, all I saw was a murderous red the same vibrant shade as the freshest bruise hidden in the crook of his elbow. Tooru was going to meet the unrealistic goals set for him by those who enabled his unhealthy habits, even if it killed him. He would reclaim his crown and rule the world. Oikawa Tooru was not a god, but he was raised to the standards of one.

Soon we began to drift apart as the boy I loved was slowly replaced by ambition incarnate. But by god, I still loved him more than I loved life itself. Kisses became emotionless and nights spent together grew further apart as he devoted himself more and more to his developed talent and I was forced to take a seat back and watch as he pushed himself past the point of no return. Our chemistry on the court began to falter too. Normally flawless sets were a degree too sharp and spikes missed their marks. We refused to talk about it, but the tension grew so thick that it threatened to snap, and snap it did. 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Tooru and Tobio were finally standing on the same court again but on opposite sides of the net. Three years had passed and nothing had changed; all of Tooru’s training had led up to this moment and the flames behind his eyes lit them to a fiery hue of brown, which would remind me of a comforting hot chocolate if it were not such a scorching shade. Every failed set and every point Karasuno scored against us simply threw more kindling into the blaze until we were finally at match point and ambition burned so bright in his heart that Tooru looked like embers were seeping from his pores. The game began to follow a predictable rhythm- set, spike, block, receive, chance ball, set, spike, block, receive, and so on. Tooru and I were beginning to fall back into the same patterns we used to have during matches and I even thought I caught a glimpse of adoration in his eyes for me between the sets sent my way. But that still didn’t hide the consuming blaze within his soul. 

The temperature in the room was boiling and the points racked up higher and higher until Karasuno couldn’t stand the heat- one faltered receive threw the ball into our half of the court, however, outside the boundary line. But Tooru could fly higher than any of those crows on the other side of the net. One leap from behind the boundary line and he was soaring, the ball so far out from the court that it would have been out of bounds if Tooru wasn’t on our side. The ball was in his grasp and he sent it our way perfectly like I had seen him do thousands of times, but as he began his descent the fire within him burnt his wings to a crisp and he fell in a way reminiscent of Icarus. However, when Icarus fell back to Earth, no one was around to hear the snap of bones that Tooru produced as he crashed into a metal bench and, eventually, the floor. The room grew silent as the moments passed. I could feel my heart threatening to beat out of my chest. Spurred into movement by the volleyball ricocheting mere centimeters from my foot I leapt towards him so quickly that I wasn’t quite sure anything that had just happened was real. My tears stained his jersey as I rolled him over to stare into his closed eyes, I realized he was out cold as a crowd formed around us. He was ripped from my arms and I screamed as if someone had ripped out my own heart. It was no longer a secret that Oikawa Tooru was not a god. 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

A couple of days had passed, but as I looked into the mirror I realized that my eyes were still rimmed red from the hours of crying I had done the night before. Tooru stayed over at my home frequently, but the night prior I was alone and it was painful. Although I knew it would hurt me, I couldn’t bear the agony anymore. Equipped with an umbrella and a bouquet of freshly picked flowers from my mother’s garden, I stepped out into the rain and began my journey. 

I noticed Tooru’s eyes looked like mine as I stepped into the hospital room. It smelled of rubbing alcohol and death in the building, but the space around Tooru radiated life and love. It always did for me. Looking into his eyes didn’t provide as much relief as I thought it would, I could still sense the fiery ambition eating away at him from the inside. He was enraged at himself for what had happened on the court and he was hungry for a second chance, but looking at his elevated leg which was wrapped in a cast up to the pelvis I didn’t think that chance would ever come around. 

He didn’t regard me with the loving gaze he used to but instead looked indifferent. I expected a hug, maybe a kiss, but instead I opted to sit in the chair near his bed. I sat stiffly, trying to find comfort in the solid wooden chair, but found none. I didn’t think I’d ever feel comfortable again if I couldn’t have Him in my arms. Tooru looked on to the wall opposite and we sat in silence for a minute or so until he averted his gaze in my direction.

“Hajime, you brought me flowers. You know those are only for funerals, right?”

I looked down at the flimsy bouquet I had brought him of samples from my Mother’s garden out back and started to feel pathetic. I would have forgotten about the flowers if my knuckles weren’t clenched around them so tightly that they took on a sickly shade of white. There were red, blue, and green flowers in the mix. They reminded me of the bruises on his forearm I used to kiss, direct byproducts of his overexertion in volleyball. They reminded me of when he used to really love me.

“I know,” I started, “but they still made me think of you. I couldn't get the thought out of my head.”

Tooru crooked an eyebrow, “how so?”

I looked down from his face back at the flowers and clenched them tighter as I drew a breath,   
“Tooru, I was hoping the ambition that pushed you to this extreme would die after the incident. I miss you.” 

I looked back up to him, a tear threatening to fall from my eye. I expected him to feel the same, but as I met his eyes again they were burning with the same red I saw the night I realized that Tooru had changed from the boy who used to whisper his love to me into someone so consumed with rage for oneself that it had turned him into a beast. 

“Hajime, I can’t quit,”, his words were laced with fervor, “I can still play after my leg heals and by god, I will. Nothing can stop me, this is my destiny.” 

The tear that threatened to fall took a suicide dive down my cheek, but it didn’t stop there. My eyes, already swollen from crying the night before, became subject to a flurry of tears that refused to stop, but Tooru only recalled me with a blank stare as if he was reconsidering what he was about to say, but as the words began falling from his mouth they hit me like a freight train and he and I both knew there was no going back.

“Hajime, I don’t think that we should see each other anymore, I am going to hurt you, and I can’t live with that. If I hurt myself, that’s fine and I can live with the consequences. But if I hurt you I could never forgive myself.” 

I couldn’t respond through the tears. I wasn’t crying because I was losing him, I cried because I knew that there was nothing I could do anymore to stop him from hurting himself. Tooru didn’t cry, instead, he looked at me with the same empty look he regarded me with earlier. I almost couldn't sense any fire behind his gaze, spare for a few embers. I knew he had been pondering this for a while and that his broken leg was the final straw. His fire of ambition had eaten him whole and casting me aside was the only way to protect me. I fucking loved him, but I knew that to be the truth too. Oikawa Tooru was not a god, but he was going to make himself one if it was the last thing he did. 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Months had passed and I kept my promise to Oikawa to keep my distance. He had returned to school a number of weeks ago after the operation to piece the bones in his leg back together proved successful. I never saw him in the halls on campus, spare for a couple of times at a distance in between classes. Oikawa looked thinner than I remembered and he was on crutches now, the cast wrapped around his leg now cut off above the knee. I always knew Oikawa was within the vicinity when I could feel the heat of the fire he radiated lapping against me, and that’s when I knew it was my cue to go somewhere else; if he even regarded me or sent a “hello” in my direction, I didn’t know if I would be able to handle it and I didn’t want to find out. In an effort to get as far away from here as I could I sent out an application to UC Irvine in Southern California not thinking anything of it, but once I found out I was invited to enroll I accepted the offer without a second thought. And now, as the group of us Aoba Johsai third years stood solemnly under the cherry blossoms in the courtyard for our graduation ceremony, I dared to cast a glance across the row at Oikawa. He looked beautiful dressed up in his uniform and he was glowing brighter than I had ever seen him. A cherry blossom leaf fell into his hair from above and I smiled when I realized that he never noticed it.

I heard that he was also heading overseas, to Argentina so he could pursue the foreign volleyball leagues and I could only hope that he would keep himself safe, but hoping was all that I had the capacity to do. I still loved him more than he would ever know, and for a second I thought that I could see heaven in his eyes despite the hellfire of ambition and self-loathing I knew burned in the core of his soul. But today he looked happier than I had seen him in a long time and I would relish that for as long as this moment would allow. In my heart, I knew that this would be the last time I would ever see him, and I was finally content with that. Oikawa Tooru was not a god, but I always loved and worshipped him like one, and I would continue to do so until the end of my days.


End file.
